Marking a new beginning.

When I graduated college in 2015 I felt like I had my whole future ahead of me. I had just finished studying mechanical engineering and art & design and I had made plans to move to Silicon Valley in a few months to pursue a career in design. But I wanted to apply my newly minted skill set in a meaningful way before I moved away to California. So decided to design a lounge chair. This chair would allow me to really test what I had learned in school and it would give me an opportunity to mark the beginning of my new life as an independent adult. I spent two months designing and building the chair, loaded it up with all my belongings, and drove out to Silicon Valley to begin the next chapter of my life.

A defining piece to compliment a warm tone.

The prospective consumer I had in mind while designing this chair was a young professional with a passion for clean design. Someone who was furnishing their first real apartment and had an appreciation for architecture and modern furniture. Their apartment feels light and takes cues from Scandinavian design but is far from an Ikea catalogue. Instead, they want to begin collecting furniture that is higher end and built to last. They want something that makes a statement while entertaining friends but is comfortable enough to relax in after a long day of work. The goal was to design something warm yet striking.

How do you make a chair feel warm?

I experimented with different directions to achieve a sense of warmth and high design. I began with the vision of a rich wood frame and soft wool cushions but then shifted to a molded plywood design. An organic plywood form would look architectural yet natural and really achieve the goal of being bold yet warm.

Refinement. Refinement. Refinement.

I moved to SolidWorks as soon as I had a design direction sketched out because it allowed me to better visualize the final form. After experimenting with different proportions for the legs, arm rests, and back, I honed in on the final design. The swooping form of the seat and armrests are reminiscent of a manta ray, which is where the chair gets its name from.

Improving the conventional plywood molding technique.

I had never molded plywood before so half the challenge of this project was designing an easy, inexpensive, and repeatable system of molding plywood. I researched the methods that boat builders and furniture makers used to bend wood and applied my engineering and materials science background to modify their techniques for my needs. It took me a week of experimenting with different materials and approaches until I perfected my method, but my experimentation paid off because I developed a technique that was cheaper and stronger than conventional methods. I also eliminated the commonly reported problem of bent lamination "springback". The infographic below outlines the differences in technique.